14.
The evening stood bewildered among street lamps, its gold tarnished by the city dust.
A woman, gaudily decked and painted, leant over the rail of her balcony, a living fire waiting for its moths.
Suddenly an eddy was formed in the road round a street-boy crushed under the wheels of a carriage, and the woman on the balcony fell to the floor screaming in agony, stricken with the grief of the great white-robed Mother who sits in the world's inner shrine.
15.
I remember the scene on the barren heath-a girl sat alone on the grass before the gipsy camp, braiding her hair in the afternoon shade.
Her little dog jumped and barked at her busy hands, as though her employment had no importance.
In vain did she rebuke it, calling it "a pest," saying she was tired of its perpetual silliness.
She struck it on the nose with her reproving forefinger, which only seemed to delight it the more.
She looked menacingly grave for a few moments, to warn it of impending doom; and then, letting her hair fall, quickly snatched it up in her arms, laughed, and pressed it to her heart.
16.
He is tall and lean, withered to the bone with long repeated fever, like a dead tree unable to draw a single drop of sap from anywhere.
In despairing patience, his mother carries him like a child into the sun, where he sits by the roadside in the shortening shadows of each forenoon.
The world passes by-a woman to fetch water, a herd-boy with cattle to pasture, a laden cart to the distant market-and the mother hopes that some least stir of life may touch the awful torpor of her dying son.
17.
If the ragged villager, trudging home from the market, could suddenly be lifted to the crest of a distant age, men would stop in their work and shout and run to him in delight.
For they would no longer whittle down the man into the peasant, but find him full of the mystery and spirit of his age.
Even his poverty and pain would grow great, released from the shallow insult of the present, and the paltry things in his basket would acquire pathetic dignity.
18.
With the morning he came out to walk a road shaded by a file of deodars, that coiled the hill round like importunate love.
He held the first letter from his newly wedded wife in their village home, begging him to come to her, and come soon.
The touch of an absent hand haunted him as he walked, and the air seemed to take up the cry of the letter: "Love, my love, my sky is brimming with tears!"
He asked himself in wonder, "How do I deserve this?"
The sun suddenly appeared over the rim of the blue hills, and four girls from a foreign shore came with swift strides, talking loud and followed by a barking dog.
The two elder turned away to conceal their amusement at something strange in his insignificance, and the younger ones pushed each other, laughed aloud, and ran off in exuberant mirth.
He stopped and his head sank. Then he suddenly felt his letter, opened and read it again.
19.
The day came for the image from the temple to be drawn round the holy town in its chariot.
The Queen said to the King, "Let us go and attend the festival."
Only one man out of the whole household did not join in the pilgrimage. His work was to collect stalks of spear-grass to make brooms for the King's house.
The chief of the servants said in pity to him, "You may come with us."
He bowed his head, saying, "It cannot be."
The man dwelt by the road along which the King's followers had to pass. And when the Minister's elephant reached this spot, he called to him and said, "Come with us and see the God ride in his chariot!"
"I dare not seek God after the King's fashion," said the man.
"How should you ever have such luck again as to see the God in his chariot?" asked the Minister.
"When God himself comes to my door," answered the man.
The Minister laughed loud and said, "Fool! 'When God comes to your door!' yet a King must travel to see him!"
"Who except God visits the poor?" said the man.
20.
Days were drawing out as the winter ended, and, in the sun, my dog played in his wild way with the pet deer.
The crowd going to the market gathered by the fence, and laughed to see the love of these playmates struggle with languages so dissimilar.
The spring was in the air, and the young leaves fluttered like flames. A gleam danced in the deer's dark eyes when she started, bent her neck at the movement of her own shadow, or raised her ears to listen to some whisper in the wind.
The message comes floating with the errant breeze, with the rustle and glimmer abroad in the April sky. It sings of the first ache of youth in the world, when the first flower broke from the bud, and love went forth seeking that which it knew not, leaving all it had known.
And one afternoon, when among the amlak trees the shadow grew grave and sweet with the furtive caress of light, the deer set off to run like a meteor in love with death.
It grew dark, and lamps were lighted in the house; the stars came out and night was upon the fields, but the deer never came back.
My dog ran up to me whining, questioning me with his piteous eyes which seemed to say, "I do not understand!"
But who does ever understand?
21.
Our Lane is tortuous, as if, ages ago, she started in quest of her goal, vacillated right and left, and remained bewildered for ever.
Above in the air, between her buildings, hangs like a ribbon a strip torn out of space: she calls it her sister of the blue town.
She sees the sun only for a few moments at mid-day, and asks herself in wise doubt, "Is it real?"
In June rain sometimes shades her band of daylight as with pencil hatchings. The path grows slippery with mud, and umbrellas collide. Sudden jets of water from spouts overhead splash on her startled pavement. In her dismay, she takes it for the jest of an unmannerly scheme of creation.
The spring breeze, gone astray in her coil of contortions, stumbles like a drunken vagabond against angle and corner, filling the dusty air with scraps of paper and rag. "What fury of foolishness! Are the Gods gone mad?" she exclaims in indignation.
But the daily refuse from the houses on both sides-scales of fish mixed with ashes, vegetable peelings, rotten fruit, and dead rats-never rouse her to question, "Why should these things be?"
She accepts every stone of her paving. But from between their chinks sometimes a blade of grass peeps up. That baffles her. How can solid facts permit such intrusion?
On a morning when at the touch of autumn light her houses wake up into beauty from their foul dreams, she whispers to herself, "There is a limitless wonder somewhere beyond these buildings."
But the hours pass on; the households are astir; the maid strolls back from the market, swinging her right arm and with the left clasping the basket of provisions to her side; the air grows thick with the smell and smoke of kitchens. It again becomes clear to our Lane that the real and normal consist solely of herself, her houses, and their muck-heaps.
22.
The house, lingering on after its wealth has vanished, stands by the wayside like a madman with a patched rag over his back.
Day after day scars it with spiteful scratches, and rainy months leave their fantastic signatures on its bared bricks.
In a deserted upper room one of a pair of doors has fallen from rusty hinges; and the other, widowed, bangs day and night to the fitful gusts.
One night the sound of women wailing came from that house. They mourned the death of the last son of the family, a boy of eighteen, who earned his living by playing the part of the heroine in a travelling theatre.
A few days more and the house became silent, and all the doors were locked.
Only on the north side in the upper room that desolate door would neither drop off to its rest nor be shut, but swung to and fro in the wind like a self-torturing soul.
After a time children's voices echo once more through that house. Over the balcony-rail women's clothes are hung in the sun, a bird whistles from a covered cage, and a boy plays with his kite on the terrace.
A tenant has come to occupy a few rooms. He earns little and has many children. The tired mother beats them and they roll on the floor and shriek.
A maid-servant of forty drudges through the day, quarrels with her mistress, threatens to, but never leaves.
Every day some small repairs are done. Paper is pasted in place of missing panes; gaps in the railings are made good with split bamboo; an empty box keeps the boltless gate shut; old stains vaguely show through new whitewash on the walls.
The magnificence of wealth had found a fitting memorial in gaunt desolation; but, lacking sufficient means, they try to hide this with dubious devices, and its dignity is outraged.
They have overlooked the deserted room on the north side. And its forlorn door still bangs in the wind, like Despair beating her breast.
23.